Lake County, USDA take aim at wild pigs

Hairy hogs are expensive nuisance as they damage public lands

A passel of wild pigs root in a small stream for turtle eggs, grubs… (Photo courtesy of SJRWMD,…)

November 1, 2010|By Stephen Hudak, Orlando Sentinel

They're hairy and hungry.

Wild hogs are rooting and running amok in rural areas of Central Florida like Lake County, where officials decided last week to spend up to $30,000 to control the feral, fast-breeding pigs plowing their way through public lands.

"It looks like rototillers were turned loose," said Wendy Breeden, director of public resources in Lake County, describing deep-rut damage in the 192-acre Ferndale Preserve, where 55 feral hogs were trapped or shot last year.

The pigs — relentless, voracious eaters — respect no boundaries, said William Giuliano, a feral-hog expert and associate professor in the Department of Wildlife, Ecology and Conservation at the University of Florida.

Thriving in the dense, moist brush of the state's hammocks and marshes and facing few natural predators, wild hogs can be found in every county on the peninsula, digging snout-first for acorns, grubs and turtle eggs.

" Florida's almost too perfect for them," Giuliano said.

Florida's feral swine population, estimated at 500,000, is second only to that of Texas.

Though few attacks on humans have been reported, the omnivorous animals sport long canine teeth that look like potentially lethal tusks, and wild hogs have been known to turn aggressive if injured or cornered, Giuliano said.

Feral swine cause an estimated $800 million in damage annually in the U.S., not including damage to native ecosystems, said Carol Bannerman, a spokeswoman for U.S. Department of Agriculture Wildlife Services.

In the past five years, Lake County has spent more than $32 million — the majority raised by a special tax referendum — to buy public lands and remove exotic plants. The rampaging swine threaten those restoration efforts.

Lake County will pay USDA wildlife specialists $57 an hour to remove feral hogs from county lands. Specialists trap, snare and shoot the beasts. Some of the money may also be used to control coyotes, considered a growing problem.

Federal wildlife specialists, contracted by some airports, military facilities and water-management districts, trapped and shot 2,283 nuisance hogs in Florida in fiscal year 2009, three times as many as five years earlier.

But the animals repopulate quickly. Sows can produce two litters a year with as many as a dozen piglets.

"What is known is that the population is rapidly increasing in size and range, which poses greater threats to agriculture, the environment and human safety," Bannerman said. The USDA tests the carcasses for diseases like brucellosis to ensure that wild hogs are not spreading pathogens and parasites to other livestock.

The St. Johns River Water Management District has spent $300,000 with USDA Wildlife Services over the past three years to protect land and levees in the district that spans 18 counties, including Lake, Orange, Seminole and Volusia.

The district has ousted more than 3,100 of the tusked pigs since the beginning of 2008, relying on the USDA specialists and volunteer trappers, spokesman Hank Largin said. The district also has thinned the feral swine population throughout Central Florida by employing what Largin called "hog control agents," or hunters.

"The sheer numbers of hogs removed via all methods indicate the scale of the problem," he said.

Prized for their meat, wild pigs are a popular hunting target in Florida, second only to white-tailed deer among large animals, said Joy Hill, a spokeswoman for the Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission. More than 3,200 feral hogs were killed by hunters in the state's Wildlife Management Areas between Aug. 1, 2009, and May 1, the most recent period for which data is available on the agency's website.

Not just anybody can go hog-hunting on state lands, though. The wildlife commission requires hunters to have a license and follow the state's rules, which vary with each area.

Though it also considered hiring hunters, Lake County abandoned that option because of liability concerns, Interim County Manager Sandy Minkoff said. The county does not allow hunting on public lands, which are passive recreation areas featuring trails for walking, hiking, horseback-riding and bird-watching.

"This is not the place for dogs and hunters," said Wendy Poag, a Lake County naturalist.

But it's also not the right place for wild hogs, an invasive species brought to North America in the 1500s by Spanish explorers. Their rooting threatens expensive restoration work and new plantings of native flora.